Senator Elizabeth Warren (D): In our country, if you work hard and play by the rules, you ought to be able to take care of yourself and the people you love. That’s a fundamental promise of America – a promise that should be true for everyone.

Growing up in Oklahoma, that promise came through for me and my family. After my older brothers joined the military and I was still just a kid, my daddy had a heart attack and couldn’t work. My mom found a minimum wage job at Sears, and that job saved our house and our family. My daddy ended up as a janitor, but he raised a daughter who got to be a public school teacher, a law professor, and a Senator. We got a real opportunity to build something.

Working families today face a lot tougher path than my family did. And families of color face a path that is steeper and rockier, a path made even harder by the impact of generations of discrimination.

I’ve spent my career getting to the bottom of why America’s promise works for some families, but others who work just as hard slip through the cracks into disaster. What I’ve found is terrifying: these aren’t cracks that families are falling into – they’re traps. America’s middle class is under attack.

How did we get here? Billionaires and big corporations decided they wanted more of the pie, and they enlisted politicians to cut them a fatter slice. They crippled unions so no one could stop them, [….] dismantled the financial rules meant to keep us safe after the Great Depression, and cut their own taxes so they paid less than their secretaries and janitors.

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After Wall Street crashed our economy in 2008, I left the classroom to go to Washington and confront the broken system head on.

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We created America’s first consumer watchdog to hold the big banks accountable.

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I never thought I’d run for office – not in a million years. But when Republican Senators tried to sabotage the reforms and run me out of town, I went back to Massachusetts and ran against one of them – and I beat him.

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Today, corruption is poisoning our democracy. Politicians look the other way while big insurance companies deny patients life-saving coverage, while big banks rip off consumers, and while big oil companies destroy this planet.

Our government’s supposed to work for all of us, but instead it has become a tool for the wealthy and well-connected. The whole scam is propped up by an echo chamber of fear and hate designed to distract and divide us. People who will do or say anything to hang on to power point the finger at anyone who looks or thinks or prays or loves differently than they do.

But this dark path doesn’t have to be our future. We can make our democracy work for all of us. We can make our economy work for all of us. We can rebuild America’s middle class – but this time, we gotta build it for everyone.

No matter where you live in America, and no matter where your family came from in the world, you deserve a path to opportunity. Because no matter what our differences, most of us want the same thing: to be able to work hard, play by the same set of rules, and take care of the people we love.

That’s the America I’m fighting for, and that’s why today I’m launching an exploratory committee for president. But the outcome of this election will depend on you.

In the last two years, millions of people have done more than they ever thought they thought they would to protect the promise of America. And here’s what we learned: if we organize together, if we fight together, if we persist together, we can win – we can and we will.